Heaven knows what would have become of the poor boy but for
this intervention, as his mother was dead and he was all friendless.
Monsieur de Jouy procured him the place of private secretary to Count
Tolstoy, a Russian nobleman established by the Czar in Paris as his
political correspondent. The salary given was meagre enough, but in this
world all things have a relative as well as an intrinsic value, and
eight dollars a month seemed to the poor lad, who had never yet earned
a cent, a fragment of El Dorado or of Peru. It gave him independence.
His contemporaries have described him as gay, free, easy, and happy at
this period. He had ceased to be dependent upon anybody; he lived upon
his own earnings; he was in the full bloom of health and youth; and the
horizon before him, even though clouded, wore all the colors of the
rainbow. His father gave him a garret in the house, and continued to
allow him a seat at the table, but he made young Murger give him six of
the eight dollars earned. The rest of his salary was spent among the
boxes of books which line the parapet of the Paris quays,--a sort of
literary Morgue or dead-house, where the still-born and deceased
children of the press are exhibited, to challenge the pity of
passers-by, and so escape the corner grocer and the neighboring
trunk-maker.
Pages:
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78